Officials reported that a Japanese man attempting to exterminate a single cockroach blew up his apartment. It wasn’t deliberate overkill. It was an accident.
Kumamoto, a city on the Kyushu island about 230 miles southwest of Hiroshima, was the site of the early Sunday reports of the monumental failure in pest control.
The event took place at about midnight on Sunday.
The Kumamoto Higashi Police Station said the explosion occurred around one minute after the man applied a heavy pesticide to a cockroach he had discovered.
The man was injured slightly, and his balcony glass was shattered in the mishap. Authorities discovered burn scars close to a “kotatsu,” a slanted table adorned with a futon or thick blankets draped over one side and a heater fastened to its underside.
The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan has received several complaints of occurrences like this one, whereby pesticides that came into contact with electrical outlets or other electrical sources were the culprits.
Insecticides contain alcohol and other combustible substances. They may include propellants like propane and butane to force the chemicals out of the container and into the air.
Tragedies like this have happened when people have attempted to eliminate pests in unconventional ways.
After trying to eradicate bedbugs with rubbing alcohol and an open flame in her Cincinnati, Ohio, home in December 2017, the lady tragically set fire to the whole structure.
Also, in Cincinnati, a thirteen-year-old tried to get rid of bedbugs using the same risky mixture of fire and alcohol and ended up burning the entire house to the ground.
The fire department has issued a public safety warning: never use a spray can of anything combustible, including deodorant, hair products, or pesticide, near a fire, and always open a window or door after using a spray can inside or in a vehicle.
